Taking Time to Think

bike shop 01, originally uploaded by Chambo25.

Ahh... the alliteration of it all!

I have been looking back at photos a bunch lately (see the post about Red below) and I can't believe I never posted this one to my blog. When I took this picture, I had a feeling I really liked it, but over time I've come to realize it could be one of my all time favorites. Andrew is an interesting little character, and one of the things about him I love is the way he gets truly fascinated by things, especially mechanisms.

Watching him that day in the bike shop, he was so unlike many children. I think lots of kids who were along for the ride on their big sister's bike shopping trip would pull the, "I want one too!" card. Not Andrew. He got himself into the shop, and very quickly became interested in the mechanisms of the bikes, the brake levers, the chains and shifters, the way the pedals turned the chain to turn the wheel.

For the 15 minutes we were in the shop he went from one bike to the next, exploring their differences, playing and prodding, very content. Sure, once we all went outside for Emily's test ride, he did want to hop on and test out the bike himself... but while he was playing with those bikes, he was a character truly absorbed. It was a fun thing to watch, and a neat thing to capture.

I also love, in this shot, the way that his bright red shirt plays in a field that is dominated by shades of gray and black.

Old Tricks, New Dog

A lot of recent changes have found me returning to interesting old patterns. I recently moved... twice, actually, and I'm realizing that one old habit I need to break is never quite figuring out how to settle myself into a space. Still, while I'm not yet settled into my new home, I am finding some comfort activities that make me feel new in my old ways.

One, the big one of the day, is that I joined a gym today, and I hope to go regularly to a gym for the first time in years. Now, this is not to say I haven't worked out, but I've done so in a more private setting for the last year or more.

Today I returned to that sweaty semi-social environment where people gather with a collective purpose and move... sometimes in parallel, often in varied patterns, all in a close proximity. It was exhilarating to get off my ass and do this, and I'm very glad I finally did. Signing up and starting to go has been a to-do list item for a couple weeks now.

Going back to the gym is not isolated in its status as a newly re-established old practice of mine that is helping me feel a bit renewed. Another such activity has been a recent re acquaintance with and focus on actively listening my way through the vast collection of music I've compiled in the last few years. In the last few weeks I've found myself pulling out the CD books to discover discs I never uploaded to my ipod (or discs I only uploaded partially and have found myself wanting to hear more of). This has all been a very therapeutic way to spend time, and has had me dreaming up new runs of mix CDs to send to good friends and family and all kinds of other things.

A third activity on the list has been a renewed interest in both photography and Flickr as a venue for photography.

Others I hope to add to the list in the not-too-distant future include reading more, cooking more, finding a church that I like in the area, spending more time outdoors, and signing up for some sort of class by January at the latest.

I have often expressed here my love for turning things on their heads, and this is one entry where I feel the adage I used as a title is really apt. I've been trying some old tricks out for the first time in awhile, and man if they aren't helping me feel, in some small ways, like a bit of new dog.

Woof.

Color

Fall Red 03, originally uploaded by Chambo25.

I recently reviewed all the photos I have up on Flicker looking for photos that included or highlighted the color Red. Doing so was great fun, and shortly after that activity I remembered having recently taken some photos in the neighborhood of fall leaves, including the one above.

There's something I find irresistible about light caught in bright fall leaves... and this jumble of bright red, light in the sky and dark branches is a great example of what I hope to grab when out on a leaf shooting expedition.

Random... I know... but that what this here blog is all about.

Duck Butt

Ducks in the creek 01, originally uploaded by Chambo25.

After posting a long wordy rant about my new favorite sitcom (wow... not a statement I can make often) I needed to put up a picture as counterbalance. I'm glad I found this one to toss up.

Just some ducks in a Tookany Creek near my mom's house in Philly. Take a couple weekends ago while on a walk one unseasonably warm Sunday afternoon.

On Being a Convert

I was home for Thanksgiving, and among various conversations I had in the course of this Tuesday-through-Sunday visit to Philadelphia many stand out in my memory. One involved how my mother almost was confirmed into the Catholic Church over 3 decades ago. She ended up not only joining the Episcopal Church, but eventually being ordained as a priest in the Episcopal church and is active in ministry to this day. Today, as I return home with many major projects on my plate, one brought me back to thoughts of conversion.

The project I have in mind is one I've been dreaming up for awhile and involves a combination of uploading new music to my almost year-old ipod and creating playlists that I hope will soon feed into a flurry of holiday musical gift giving. Along the way I was also hoping to get myself into the habit of reviewing some disks here and there and posting them to a certain blog... eh hem... this one. What? Who said that!?!!?!?!

Oh wait.

Yeah, I've been posting that thought for how long now? Crapsticks. Anyway, I was working my way through some music today, and I was thinking about when somebody tells you about a band that you've heard about but has never been of interest to you. One example for me is Martin Sexton, who a friend told me about years ago. He's got a very gospel-tinged singer songwriter sound, and one that I really just couldn't get into when I first heard about him. This was back in college, and I was very steeped in a number of types of music very distant from gospelfolk. In September I saw Martin Sexton perform live in New Haven at Toad's. Talk about a conversion. Wow... what a show.

Martin Sexton was not, however, the conversion I sat down to write about. Nor did I intend to write about my mom's religious life. I wanted to write quickly about a new joy in my life, 30 Rock. Until the last month and a half, I entertained a curious dilemma. On one hand, I had my love for Tina Fey, something true and heartfelt... but it was tempered by an ill-conceived notion that 30 Rock simply wasn't that strong as a show. I now am unsure how I came up with such a bizarre idea, but I am glad to say, such craziness is no longer part of my life.

In late October I started watching episodes of the first season via NetFlix, and was hooked right away. I'm now all caught up and seriously frustrated with waiting a week between new episodes. I also dread the prospect of the writer's strike taking away new episodes for a long period. Isn't it bad enough that we're without new Daily Show and Colbert Report?


Supposedly there's a chance the strike could be ending this week... at least the blog over at unitedhollywood.com talks about such rumors today. I say... the end can't come soon enough, and I hope all the writers make a reasonably nice haul out of this whole strange thing being resolved. Imagine... the people who are responsible for all the laughs, all the cleverness wanting a cut of the online $$! Incredible that more major media companies aren't being overthrown by the power and possibility of new avenues.

Along those lines, check out:
www.pandora.com where you can type in songs or bands you like and have a radio station created that will try to match your interests with other similar bands or songs (and you can always veto their choices if you don't like 'em)
www.funnyordie.com which is more-or-less just a comedy focused skin of youtube but they've got some great original content from Will Ferrell and his buddy who started the site.

...and my new discovery of the day:
www.etsy.com where you can see, learn about and purchase all sorts of hand-made goods. It's like a ginormous craft fair that's searchable.

In the Hood

In the Hood, originally uploaded by Chambo25.

Who are the people in your neighborhood? Well, on Saturday, the majority of the people in my neighborhood were in some way associated with one or the other of two top Ivy League institutions, as blocks from my house Yale and Harvard's football teams met at the Yale Bowl.

Until Saturday morning I had no idea such an event would be taking place so close to me, and in response I took a little journey around the area. I snapped no great pictures of football action, but many random photos of fall foliage, etc. As I wandered home, I cam across this hood, lost by someone, and left atop a pole near the entrance to Edgewood Park.

I thought the hood was kinda fun, and so here it is, atop my weekend wrap-up posting. I'm hoping to soon follow up with a post about two new albums I've been listening to a bunch. They're two pretty new releases from pretty reliable bands, Wilco and Radiohead.

So stay tuned for that, and in the meantime I hope you had a wonderful weekend yourself. Nate, thanks for coming to visit and helping me discover Rudy's and a bit more familiarity with the ins and outs of New Haven. See you later this week.

Home

tomatoes, originally uploaded by Chambo25.

Weekend before last I was in Philly visiting my mom, and one of our activities the Saturday I was there involved disassembling pieces of her garden, in anticipation of winter. We took apart the trellis that held up her tomato plants, among other things. Before that project was done I snapped this photo of a bunch of green and red tomatoes that would soon become compost. I love the veins running through them, and I've got a bunch more pictures like this one that I hope to photoshop soon.

windows with numbers

windows with numbers, originally uploaded by Chambo25.

This is one of an insane number of photos I recently took while wandering around in NYC on the Sunday before Halloween. Life has been a bit of a blur lately, but looking back through that sun-soaked Sunday afternoon of pictures has been a fun pastime for me this evening.

As I wandered that day I spent a good amount of time in Washington Square Park, surrounded by musicians of various kinds:
- A guy who played an upbeat if somewhat repetitive rhythm on a series of buckets, drums, weights, pans, pots, etc.
- There was a group of men with various kinds and sizes of brass instruments anchored by a dude with a drum kit, and occasionally they would seem to go head-to-head with the pots and pans man.
- Across the central fountain was a group headed up by a guy who bore some resemblance to Jimi Hendrix. This somewhat spaced out area was drenched in guitar licks and little else
- Further away from the heart of the park, off closer to the busy streets was a jazz quartet headed up by a trumpet-player who would occasionally play two horns simultaneously, quite the remarkable feat to witness.

Still, for me, there was a lot about that Sunday that had to do with quiet. When I lived in New York for 8 months I felt like I could never find quiet, perhaps because of the constant bustle, perhaps because I couldn't find it within myself. At the time I was actually living in Brooklyn, an area decidedly less frenetic than the section on Midtown where I was wandering this October. Still, there's something about all the human activity that can be like water when you're alone wandering through it. If you're observing, it can all start to feel like a meditation, where you settle yourself to a state of consistency, quiet, stability, and witness what is passing around you without letting it tear you away from your focus point.

I could be way out on a limb here.

Regardless, the mishmash ramshackle front of this building caught my eye, and I love the result for so many reasons. Whether it's the huge block letters of the sign printed one-letter-per-page along the top of the frame, or the taped up window panes below. I love the school buss that's reflected in lower right window of the brilliant blue door. I like the panes of stained glass, such a ceremonial feature that appears here so unceremoniously.

I'm very happy with this picture.

I hope you like it too.